After a long lay-off, I’ve been retracing my street pickup knowledge to some extent these past few weekends. The training ground has been my closest ‘home city’ of Manchester.

When I taught street pickup, I learned quickly that the most effective way to teach I could find was not necessarily to teach kids what to do, but to watch them do a few sets and tell them what to stop doing.

For this reason I recorded my early sets to self-teach myself what my issues were after such a long lay off. Recording your sets is so valuable, you can review what happened and you see what you don’t see in the moment – all the bad shit.

So if you’re anything other than a top table street pickup artist, get yourself some equipment to record your work and watch over it when you get home.

Here are four basic early mistakes which I made and which I have swiftly corrected.

The Stop

I said about arms length, you don’t have to measure it!

Get in front of her and stop her moving. Smile, keep a safe distance, about an arm’s length or just over, make eye contact and own her. Command her visuals, take up her path and own her world. She must physically and mentally stop. Don’t position yourself as a side dish, but the main course and the focal point.

Don’t get lazy with the stop, no matter how competent you feel you are.

You’re a man of charm and style, you do the little things right.

Vocals

How many times I have moaned at my students for talking too quickly. It’s one of the single most common mistakes I saw guys making. Speak slowly and evenly at first while you rope her into your bubble.

You want to tease her into your frame. Speaking slowly with eye contact and a low tone is soothing and hypnotic.

Jabbering like a fucking lunatic is one of those behaviours to iron out.
Take your time to pitch your reason for stopping her. If you can take ten seconds, you’re on your way to her not caring where she was headed.

Get her to do the talking

You like her and you want to find out more about her. If she wants to talk, shut up and let her. Not letting her talk is contrary to the claim you want to get to know her (which is what you’re saying when you stop her to talk to her). It’s not congruent if you don’t let her talk.

He’s halfway there? Now all he has to do is put up with her hyper sensitivity, irrationality and constant nagging for the next 40 years.

If she is talking, let her do it. You guide the path of the conversation, you lead the subject matter, but if you can get her talking you’re halfway there.

Save your guns

If you can get her contributing to the conversation then you’re doing very well. Now, if you can’t get her talking then you have to stack, search for hooks, DHV yourself, plough and generally persuade her into talking and sometimes you’ll want to spike her with some attraction material.

Don’t be keen to blow all your top lines in one minute, no matter how hilarious they may be.

Get her talking and save the ammo. You may really wish you had something sharp to throw in for when the conversation peters out.

Or for when you’re on an instant date.

Now get out there and do it. It’s show time. These simple rules will elevate your street pickup skills or you can learn street pickup from us if you’ve got a moment to spare.